Water Resources Discipline ITAC Activities

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In Reply Refer To:
Mail Stop 409

MEMORANDUM

February 19, 2004

To: Karen Siderelis
Geographic Information Office

From: Katherine Lins /signed/
Chief, Office of Water Information

Subject: Network Reliability

The Water Resources Discipline (WRD) Information Technology Advisory Committee (ITAC) requests that the Geographic Information Office (GIO) provide assurances that systems dependent on the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) computing network and on NatWeb have after-hour and week-end network staff support. The ITAC identified a number of dependencies that affect our ability to reliably and securely accomplish USGS.s mission to provide water information to the nation. A critical dependency is a reliable network operation continuously monitored and supported 24 hours, 7 days a week (24 x 7). There have been a number of times when network failures or NatWeb failures occurred during non-working hours and significant time has been lost waiting for the situation to be reported and rectified.

One interim solution that ITAC proposes is for the GIO to provide a network call-center operation with, at least, 18 x 7 coverage. Additionally, it is essential that the network operations in HQ and each Region commit to responding to outages within hours of their being reported. Some teams in the GIO have been exceptionally responsive and recognize the critical importance of 24 x 7 reliability, and we would like to see that commitment institutionalized. The WRD staff will be happy to share our experience with our previous call centers that provided 18 x 7-hour coverage by maximizing on the time difference across Regions, thus minimizing the impact to individuals, and still providing the critical support essential to our mission.

A 24 x 7 reliable network operation will make it possible for us to serve real-time data remotely without interruption and for Districts to consider server consolidations in the future without a loss of functionality critical to accomplishing our mission.

Copy to:
Associate Director for Water
ITAC
GIOLT
NWIS ESC

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Katherine Lins
Chief, Office of Water Information, WRD
U.S. Geological Survey
440 National Center
Reston, VA 20192
703-648-5014
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